the grass is always greener (but it isn't home)
by seaofsound
Summary: Lillie, Angela, and Raeger grow up, out, and apart, but eventually, inevitably, together again. — series of ficlets depicting lillie&angela&raeger's relationship as childhood friends. non-chronological & standalone.
1. lillie, i

**the grass is always greener (but it isn't home)**

1\. little bird take flight/you are destined for greatness

The year they are six, Lillie wants to be a musician.

She's good at it, really, as any six year old can be. Maurice puts her through rigorous lessons in an effort to cultivate her character, and she happily obliges. Before flute lessons at four in the afternoon, she attends school at the all-girls academy in the city where her mother and her mother's mother went before her, a legacy in the making. Angela memorizes this schedule quickly, and is always ready at the Inn's stoop when Lillie comes home, a new composition in hand. She practices with her father, Angela and sometimes Raeger acting as her audience. They clap and deal praise accordingly, yet never out of pure, unadulterated obligation; there is a sense of awe present in the way her friends view her, this almost starstruck pride. Their admiration fuels Lillie's ambition, and she wonders how many people she can touch in the way she's done with these two close to her heart. The world is a big place outside of cozy little Oak Tree, nestled in the crest of a much larger mountain in a much larger world.

There are bigger audiences than these.


	2. angela, i

2\. i am no scientologist/the one thing i don't understand

Raeger, perhaps due to the curse of biology, is able to keep pace with Lillie, Angela choking on their dust.

Always several paces ahead of her everywhere except in the classroom, they commingle in ways Angela could only dream of doing. They discuss sports, compete in the forest, bounce energies off of one another. They are popular in and outside of the classroom, and Angela is not. She does not care for things this trivial, but reasserting this principle loses its effect every time she repeats it in her mind.

Raeger is quiet when she walks home with him, and Angela feels a little more than slightly insulted. They are friends, too, she once reasoned, but silence and awkwardness are poor substitutes for the company of a human being. They do their homework together, but only because it is the most reasonable choice and they share the same distaste for one of their instructors. In those few hours, Angela supposes, they become friends again.

Once they finish, Lillie is home, and the two run out of the confines of the Guild or the Restaurant or wherever their feet take them to meet her. Raeger and Lillie share a handshake, Angela left with not even the spoils of companionship.

This, she swears, is not biology. It is some other kind of inexplicable phenomena.


	3. raeger, i

3\. i am not an expert/looks can be deceiving

There are countless flavors to food as well as people.

Not literally, Raeger thinks, not until he reaches the tender age of fourteen. He has always been popular, his name stuck on the tongues of girls and boys alike. They wonder, in whispered tones in locker rooms and bathrooms and chatrooms, what _other_ , more tangible, parts of him feel like. Raeger is curious, too, but not about himself. Never about himself. He asserts as safe a distance from the other students as he can, though they develop a tendency to crowd him. They follow him to class, to lunch, and he imagines if they could, they'd even follow him home.

"Have you ever done it?" one boy asks.

"No," Raeger says easily.

"Kissed?"

"No."

"Held hands?"

Maybe in elementary school. "Nope."

"Really?"

Really. "Yes." Raeger shrugs before diving into his lunch. How he wished to drown in it.

One weekend, at a party he never wished to attend, he kisses a girl out of a juvenile game of spin the bottle. Her lips are tight and awkward and she tastes like sugar, the artificial kind city food is filled with. Raeger pulls away first and doesn't remember her name, neither before nor in the aftermath of the game. The boys and girls all giggle to themselves and to each other, sharing the experience as if they weren't all there to witness it. He leaves soon after, long before the party's designated end, and he is thankful for the privacy of adulthood on the train home.


End file.
